Apparently Trump’s feelings were hurt after the North Koreans said mean things! The Washington Post: President Trump on Thursday canceled a planned summit next month with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, citing “tremendous anger and open hostility” from the rogue nation in a letter explaining his abrupt decision. “I feel it is inappropriate, at […]

Our panopticon is on track: Powered by artificial intelligence, Rekognition can identify, track, and analyze people in real time and recognize up to 100 people in a single image. It can quickly scan information it collects against databases featuring tens of millions of faces, according to Amazon. Amazon is marketing Rekognition for government surveillance. […]

I was listening to a This American Life episode that featured a Trump supporter from South Carolina who is young, evangelical and gay. What struck me about this interview is how convinced the guy was that Hillary Clinton was going to be indicted.

That seems to be just hanging out there. You’d think that after all the investigations, and nearly 4 years after she left office as Secretary of State, that if there were something to indict her over, someone would have done it by now.But the idea that there’s something hanging over her is definitely a weapon that has always used against the Clintons to great success. It’s out there, we don’t know when they’ll be arrested but you can bet it’s going to happen eventually. Or not, most likely.

The other thing that struck me is that like most other Trump voters I have heard, the kid seems confused. He thinks Trump is an advocate of gay marriage. It reminds me a little bit of the way that Obama supporters in 2008 would pin their hopes and dreams, sometimes conflicting ones, on Obama, the ultimate tofu candidate. I doubt that Trump has a real issue with gay marriage but you never know what’s going to pop out of his mouth in front of the right audience.

I try to stay out of the minds of Trump voters. In there, the world doesn’t make sense, up is down, things happen for no apparent reason and they seem to be unreasonably fearful. It can make you feel a bit like Tyrion Lannister trying to be reasonable with people who will kill off the best characters in pursuit of an iron throne.

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I saw a few minutes of a CSPAN interview with Bill Press, who used to be a liberal analyst on TV in Los Angeles. He has written a book entitled, “How Obama Let Progressives Down.” Maybe he’ll make some money on it. It would have been nice had liberals figured some of this out earlier. Hillary was always the real Progressive in that race, probably the last of the New Deal Democrats by philosophy, at least. But projective fantasy seems to be pervasive in our politics, and deemed superior to “boring” policy wonkery of a highly gifted and intelliigent candidate.They don’t make philosophical plays into movies anymore, either; the audience cannot sit through anything but special effects and CGI. People may literally think that a Trump presidency will be another fun version of “Apprentice.”

I thoroughly blame the media for this nonsensical “email scandal.” They either do not know what the word “scandal” means, or they simply don’t care. But they got a lot of mileage out of it, and now of course it has sunk into the collective consciousness, and can be used as shorthand, as we will certainly be forced to see during the general election campaign. This is of course the same media which gave us “Whitewater” for five years. And Trump is going around talking about indictments, so of course his audience is anxious to believe him, which is a lot more fun for them than actually learning about the nothingess that is the email story. One absolute guarantee is that if Hillary were defeated in November, we would not hear one more story about the emails until the end of time–because of course there is no story, it’s just media and Republican illusion tricks.

Once either Cruz or Rubio leave the race, their votes will likely go to the other one, right? It seems unlikely to me they would go to Trump, and I’m pretty sure I read that somewhere. If one of them leave soon enough, Trump is then very unlikely to get the nomination.

Thinking today about what it is about Clinton (s!) that I appreciate most, that tips the scales for me, I came across this, and it was a bright spot in the day–just nailed it for me, anyway. And, really, it sets her apart from every candidate out there, I believe–and obviously, trumps Trump: https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/701925905879293952

Thanks for the link but until she starts speaking my language about the perils of income instability, I think I’ll pass. I’m still many years away from retirement and I think it’s time she focused her attentions on what has happened to those of us who were forced to “sacrifice” our careers.

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Body: Last week I went down to Washington, D.C. to deliver a paper at a conference in the technical field where I worked, ten years or so and two or three careers ago, before the dot.com trash. The trip was solely an exercise in merit-making, since I doubt very much I'll get work in the field, but reconnecting with old friends was really great -- even […]

The Hill, "Court orders Iran to pay billions to 9/11 victims and families: A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Iran to pay billions of dollars in damages to the families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks." It's unlikely they will actually pay it, but the very idea that Iran should have to pay for an attack by Saudi Arabians is pr […]